Negative degrees for rate questions in personality test

Negative degrees for rate questions in personality test

by Marta Semeniuk -
Number of replies: 4

Hi,

I would like to use the Questionnaire plugin to create a test of the type called The Big Five. 

Example: https://sites.temple.edu/rtassessment/files/2018/10/Table_BFPT.pdf

For this I'm using Rate (scale 1..5) questions with Normal type of rate scale and possible answers like:

1=Disagree
2=Slightly disagree
3=Neutral
4=Slightly agree
5=Agree

It works great for a half of the questions, but one feature of this test is that when calculating the score, some response values should be subtracted rather than added (see page 5 of the doc for reference).

For example, for the question "I don't talk a lot." when one chooses Disagree, then one has to subtract 1 from the total sum.

I tried to put

(-1)=Disagree
(-2)=Slightly disagree

or

-1=Disagree
-2=Slightly disagree

But the plugin doesn't recognize such values.

Is there any way to encode negative degrees for some questions in the current version of the plugin?

If not, could you advice which function(s) in the plugin files is responsible for adding values, so that I could try to complement it with recognizing negative values? I'm a JS developer, not PHP, but I would like to try to figure this out and contribute to the plugin if it works out well smile

Thanks in advance!

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In reply to Marta Semeniuk

Re: Negative degrees for rate questions in personality test

by Chris Collman -
Picture of Documentation writers

Your post caught my eye.   I wanted to do something like this years ago for a personality test. I tried to figure it out with a lesson, quiz and questionnaire modules.  I could not do it. 

There are two problems: grouping questions to calculate a score for individual groups of questions, and the negative numbers.  Maybe someone has a better solution.  Here is my rethink.

If you gave 5 quizzes or 5 questionnaires, you could group scores.  Each of the questions relates to only 1 of the 5 personality qualities.  Somebody has to have research about randomizing questions about personality qualities get "more accurate" scores than grouping questions.  Since this is an art form, I would not give any pre test clues about the groups to my students.  You could be clever and mix in a few questions from other qualities and give them a zero score for any answer.  Perhaps you can code a way to jump between 5 different questionaires, always landing on the next unanswered question.

The negative numbers issue has a math solution. Change all the numbers to positive and there is no negative issue !  The difference between -5 and 5 is 10.  The difference between 0 and 10 is also 10.   

Negative thinkers always bother me, why can't they put things in just a positive framework? They would have less trouble in the real world big grin 

I used the numbers in the link you provided for the "Extroversion" scores.  I put them in an Excel spreadsheet and did the math.    I put another column and added the sum of the scores.  I added 10 to each of the scores in the first column and found the sum.  Then I added 20 to the first column sum of the scores and 10 to the other column.  I ended up with the same 10 of 40 possible points.    Just to make sure it worked, I changed all the minus numbers to -1 in both scoring methods.  I ended up with 26 of 40 points using both methods. Positive creative thinking provides a solution once again.

Thank you for your post.   You helped me think through how I am going to create a tool for an academic readiness class I am teaching for the first time.  Hope this helps you as well.  Good luck. 

Chris




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In reply to Chris Collman

Re: Negative degrees for rate questions in personality test

by Chris Collman -
Picture of Documentation writers

Here is the spreadsheet.  Probably easier to understand than words.

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In reply to Chris Collman

Re: Negative degrees for rate questions in personality test

by Marta Semeniuk -
Hi Chris!

Thank you very much for your response.
Your math solution looks perfect to me! I didn't think of this approach!

A few notes from me:

1. "If you gave 5 quizzes or 5 questionnaires, you could group scores."
It is possible to group scores within a single questionnaire by adding questions to different "Feedback sections" as a part of the plugin.
The questions can be in random order.

2. I think this solution requires a particular initial number for each section to even the total scores, same as in the standard calculation method provided in the example doc. The reason is that each section (column) has a different number of "negative" questions, so the total sum will not be equal for each of them.

The solution I came up with later was inspired by another questionnaire's scoring method (attached). The negative questions in there are reverse scored.
"To reverse score an item, change 1 to 5, 2 to 4, 4 to 2, and 5 to 1."
This way it doesn't require initial number for each column (I guess).

I tested this approach by completing my questionnaire and the one by Open-Source Psychometrics Project at the same time, assuming that their test uses the standard method of subtracting negative questions.
The result of my questionnaire was quite accurate when compared to theirs, but not totally equal.

Thank you again for sharing your solution! I will try it out as it seems to provide more accurate result than mine smile

Have a nice day! 

Regards,
Marta
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In reply to Marta Semeniuk

Re: Negative degrees for rate questions in personality test

by Chris Collman -
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Hi Marta,
Very creative. I just don't know how to group question scores. It is like giving a single test, where you want to get an idea of someone's skills in composition, math, biology and physics. Plus you don't want them to know that they are different subjects smile

The quiz module would also work using the scale concept. You would award 10 points for every question. The answer would determine what percentage of 10 the person scored. For example 10% would be the equal of a -5.

I like the idea of adding non-scored questions as "distractors" so the intent of determining a specific personality trait in a specific group of questions is less obvious. I imagine giving this to Psychology students for example.

Chris
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